Leaf shine - mayonnaise?

[John in Andalucia]

I read that egg mayonnaise works well as a leaf shine. No doubt it´s cheaper, and I suspect less toxic to young leaves than some of the alcohol-based products, but would it not create bacteria, since it is a refrigerated food, or does salad cream, which does not contain fresh egg, work better? Does anyone here make their own leaf shine?

[xerophyte_nyc]

Olive oil will work too

[waykoolplantz]

are we making a salad ??

[amazondk]

John,

I do not know if this has anything to do with leaf treatment, but I read the other day tha mayonaise is not a culprit in food poisoning due to the effect that the vinager in the mixture keeps bacteria down. Personally I do not put anything on palm leaves but water though.

dk

[sonoranfans]

I read that egg mayonnaise works well as a leaf shine. No doubt it´s cheaper, and I suspect less toxic to young leaves than some of the alcohol-based products, but would it not create bacteria, since it is a refrigerated food, or does salad cream, which does not contain fresh egg, work better? Does anyone here make their own leaf shine?

insecticidal soap works great and also kills bad little buggies(like mites), but is safe for humans/palms. I just spray it on and let it drain down, the fronds clean up nice. Stubborn salt stains might need some light microfiber cloth rubbing to remove. Typically if I use the soap every 3-4 weeks I dont get stubborn salt stains. Its a heck of alot easier to apply than mayonaise, just dilute the concentrate and use a sprayer.

Edited August 25, 2008 by sonoranfans

[John in Andalucia]

I read that egg mayonnaise works well as a leaf shine. No doubt it´s cheaper, and I suspect less toxic to young leaves than some of the alcohol-based products, but would it not create bacteria, since it is a refrigerated food, or does salad cream, which does not contain fresh egg, work better? Does anyone here make their own leaf shine?

insecticidal soap works great and also kills bad little buggies(like mites), but is safe for humans/palms. I just spray it on and let it drain down, the fronds clean up nice. Stubborn salt stains might need some light microfiber cloth rubbing to remove. Typically if I use the soap every 3-4 weeks I dont get stubborn salt stains. Its a heck of alot easier to apply than mayonaise, just dilute the concentrate and use a sprayer.

Tom,

That sounds great. Can you tell me about insecticidal soap? When you mention salt stains, does that apply to calcium deposits? I want something I can make that I can spray everything with from time to time and sleep safely at night!

[sonoranfans]

I read that egg mayonnaise works well as a leaf shine. No doubt it´s cheaper, and I suspect less toxic to young leaves than some of the alcohol-based products, but would it not create bacteria, since it is a refrigerated food, or does salad cream, which does not contain fresh egg, work better? Does anyone here make their own leaf shine?

insecticidal soap works great and also kills bad little buggies(like mites), but is safe for humans/palms. I just spray it on and let it drain down, the fronds clean up nice. Stubborn salt stains might need some light microfiber cloth rubbing to remove. Typically if I use the soap every 3-4 weeks I dont get stubborn salt stains. Its a heck of alot easier to apply than mayonaise, just dilute the concentrate and use a sprayer.

Tom,

That sounds great. Can you tell me about insecticidal soap? When you mention salt stains, does that apply to calcium deposits? I want something I can make that I can spray everything with from time to time and sleep safely at night!

Yes John, I am talking about calcium/Mg deposits due to our hard water here. As you probably know, when you have hard water and dry humidity, its a mess as the salt deposits will be higher with fast evaporation. The dry salts left act to dessicate the leaflets by drawing water osmotically out of the leaf. So salt deposits in soil or especially on the leaflets lead to potentially lethal conditions. I have found that insecticidal soap that I bought from home depot really cleans up the leaflets with repeated wetting over a few days. In my first application, I saved a bunch of archonto alexandre seedlings by cleaning them this way. They were starting to shrivel up on the lower leaves. The soap is harmless and biologically friendly except for a number of bugs that it kills. Here is a link to read

http://gardening.wsu.edu/library/lpro002/lpro002.htm

The soaps are really not complicated, any brand is likely to be the same as another. The concentrate I buy at home depot I dilute about 100:1. My only issue is that I dont know whether the soap cleanses off the polymer anti-transpirant coating I put on fronds of my potted palms. That anti-transpirant allows me to keep smaller wet loving palms in the dry humidity(15-30%, in the shade) like archontos, dypsis. to use the soap apply the diluted form with a sprayer to palms in deep shade or at night, wet it down good and wait, re apply every 4 hrs or so. After the first day, there should be a noticable difference in the salts. After two days, you can assume that the remaining salts are stubborn, and should be removed with the dilute soap solution and a microfiber cloth.

To cleanse soil, I use humic acid once every 2 weeks or so on the potted palms. My soils show no white salt deposits after up to 18 months of watering with hard water. Humic acid chelates metals,helping to keep them in solution so they can be rinsed from the soil. Humic acid is friendly to the beneficial microbes int he soil. Im not sure about the soap and beneficial microbes, so I wouldnt use that as a soil rinse.

[John in Andalucia]

Tom,

I´ll look into this. I´ve just completed my first summer in the greenhouse, and hopefully the soap will kill off a few fungus gnats too. Thanks for your advice.

[SubTropicRay]

John,

Try a mild insecticidal oil instead. It kills mites, aphids etc. and really makes the leaves shine.

Ray

[John in Andalucia]

John,

Try a mild insecticidal oil instead. It kills mites, aphids etc. and really makes the leaves shine.

Ray

Thanks, Ray.

Looking around online for recipies, it appears that soap and oil are commonly used together. As I understand it, as long as the soap is pure soap - with no detergents or other chemical additives, then a 1% or 2% soap to water mix will have no adverse effect on plant foliage. So I wonder if the product Tom bought at Home Depot contains oil, if it breaks down calcium deposits? Here´s a recipie I might try - I just need to find some Spanish soap that is "puro, sin aditivos". Insecticidal Soap

[TikiRick]

I have used milk...skim is best! But then again, I always go to the fridge and the damned carton is empty....again!

[sonoranfans]

John,

Try a mild insecticidal oil instead. It kills mites, aphids etc. and really makes the leaves shine.

Ray

Thanks, Ray.

Looking around online for recipies, it appears that soap and oil are commonly used together. As I understand it, as long as the soap is pure soap - with no detergents or other chemical additives, then a 1% or 2% soap to water mix will have no adverse effect on plant foliage. So I wonder if the product Tom bought at Home Depot contains oil, if it breaks down calcium deposits? Here´s a recipie I might try - I just need to find some Spanish soap that is "puro, sin aditivos". Insecticidal Soap

The soap I use is "gardensafe" brand and is entirely potassium salts of fatty acids and water, NO oil. I would be worried about the ability of oil to dissolve calcium deposits. As a chemist, it looks very unlikely to me. Soap(fatty acid salts) on the other hand is very good at helping to stabilizing emulsions of oil and water soluble species. Perhaps using the soap to clean and then the oil to preserve would be interesting, but I would be very suprised if oil was useful in dissolving calcium deposits. Soaps have both hydrophilic(water loving) and lipophilic(oil loving) functional groups on each molecule and form surfactant micelles to help stabilize solutions.

[John in Andalucia]

Thanks, Tom. So if my plants are looking dull from calcium deposits left behind from misting, then oil-based sprays won´t actually break down the deposits. The oil will give an instant shine, but would it hinder the performance of the soap breaking down the calcium? My palms are all seedlings, so perhaps it would be better to stick with a soap-only solution. Thus far, my seedlings have enough natural oils to repel the calcium deposits, but with some species, it is starting to dull the leaves. I need to reverse this before the calcium takes hold. On a few of my older seedlings I can almost scrape the calcium off. Not good!

[sonoranfans]

Thanks, Tom. So if my plants are looking dull from calcium deposits left behind from misting, then oil-based sprays won´t actually break down the deposits. The oil will give an instant shine, but would it hinder the performance of the soap breaking down the calcium? My palms are all seedlings, so perhaps it would be better to stick with a soap-only solution. Thus far, my seedlings have enough natural oils to repel the calcium deposits, but with some species, it is starting to dull the leaves. I need to reverse this before the calcium takes hold. On a few of my older seedlings I can almost scrape the calcium off. Not good!

Yes IMO, the oil will limit the solvent power of the soap in dissolving the calcium, and calcium will be less soluble in an oil/water emulsion. Calcium likes water, but not oil. The soap will clean the oil off, like it does with skin oils, but it wont be as powerful at removing the calcium with oil present. I would recommend the use of the soap solution for those seedlings, for sure. If you have alot of salt on the leaflets, I would start with 2-3% solution of the concentrate (in water) for a day and back off to 1% for a "maintenance" solution. I also would discourage the use of a mister in the really dry climates as mist droplets evaporate more quickly(its all about surface/volume ratio) and will cause higher calcium deposits on the leaflets. I almost killed all my first batch of seedlings with a mister in my shadehouse. I tend to use the sprinklet every several hours(2-8hrs) depending on ambient temp. Today, I use a sprinkler in my shadehouse that does not allow alot of air flow and drip irrigation only in the shadehouse with high air flow. The reason for this is that even a sprinkler will leave deposits with enough dry air exchange/evaporation, while drip irrigation does not wet leaflets and therefore doesnt leave deposits on leaflets.

My desert climate may be more harsh and dry(?) than yours, but it does sound like we do have some things in common, climate wise. Certainly the arizona desert will teach you some things about salt deposits and evaporation. I cant even wash my car one time and not wipe off the excess moisture with seeing the "snow like" calcium deposits looking just like droplets on the outside when it drys. Good fortune with your seedlings, keep the salt of and keep the roots damp and they should do better. Soap also cleans off dirt, and we have plenty of that here when the wind kicks up.

Here is a recently cleaned dypsis baronii, small teddy bear and the frond of a rupicola(left) that I cleaned with the soap. they all had some obvious calcium deposits 3 days before this pic. I am currently keeping them outside the shadehouse on the porch. The humidity is a bit low(~25-35%) lately for this but much better than the dry season in may june when it gets to 6-10 typically.

Edited September 4, 2008 by sonoranfans

[sonoranfans]

And here is a group of archontos(cunninghamiana(big one), purpurea(L of cunninghamiana), and alexandres(to the right), that I have recently cleaned of the scale after it developed in the shadehouse. The damaged fan, livistona jenkinsiana, was damaged by salt deposits in the shadehouse, its had a rough time recently. In the foreground you can see the top of the pistol grip sprayer that I used to apply the soap solution. A pistol grip is probably better because it uses less soap(less waste that doesnt get applied).

Edited September 4, 2008 by sonoranfans

[John in Andalucia]

Tom,

Some great results, and thanks for sharing the knowledge!